Publications related to Small population size

Text-to-Microstructure Generation Using Generative Deep Learning

Designing novel materials is greatly dependent on understanding the design principles, physical mechanisms, and modeling methods of material microstructures, requiring experienced designers with expertise and several rounds of trial and error. Although rec ...

Wiley-V C H Verlag Gmbh2024

Impact of population size on early adaptation in rugged fitness landscapes

Anne-Florence Raphaëlle Bitbol, Richard Marie Servajean

Owing to stochastic fluctuations arising from finite population size, known as genetic drift, the ability of a population to explore a rugged fitness landscape depends on its size. In the weak mutation regime, while the mean steady-state fitness increases ...

ROYAL SOC2023

Frequent asymmetric migrations suppress natural selection in spatially structured populations

Anne-Florence Raphaëlle Bitbol, Alia Abbara

Natural microbial populations often have complex spatial structures. This can impact their evolution, in particular the ability of mutants to take over. While mutant fixation probabilities are known to be unaffected by sufficiently symmetric structures, ev ...

Oxford Univ Press2023

Hydrodynamic flow and concentration gradients in the gut enhance neutral bacterial diversity

Anne-Florence Raphaëlle Bitbol

The gut microbiota features important genetic diversity, and the specific spatial features of the gut may shape evolution within this environment. We investigate the fixation probability of neutral bacterial mutants within a minimal model of the gut that i ...

National Academy of Sciences2022

Genomic consequences of colonisation, migration and genetic drift in barn owl insular populations of the eastern Mediterranean

Nicolas Jean Philippe Guex, Eléonore Lavanchy

The study of insular populations was key in the development of evolutionary theory. The successful colonisation of an island depends on the geographic context, and specific characteristics of the organism and the island, but also on stochastic processes. A ...

2022

Investigation of physiological roles of AMPK-activated protein kinase y3

Philipp Jurijvic Rhein

Clinical trials have shown that direct activators of an evolutionary-conserved metabolic sensor, AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK), are beneficial in preventing/treating a range of metabolic disorders, including type 2 diabetes. These activators, includi ...

EPFL2021

Adapt or Perish: Evolutionary Rescue in a Gradually Deteriorating Environment

Anne-Florence Raphaëlle Bitbol, Loïc Marrec

We investigate the evolutionary rescue of a microbial population in a gradually deteriorating environment, through a combination of analytical calculations and stochastic simulations. We consider a population destined for extinction in the absence of mutan ...

2020

On the relation between transversal and longitudinal scaling in cities

João Vitor Meirelles de Miranda

Does the scaling relationship between population sizes of cities with urban metrics like economic output and infrastructure (transversal scaling) mirror the evolution of individual cities in time (longitudinal scaling)? The answer to this question has impo ...

2020

Limits on amplifiers of natural selection under death-Birth updating

Andreas Pavlogiannis

The fixation probability of a single mutant invading a population of residents is among the most widely-studied quantities in evolutionary dynamics. Amplifiers of natural selection are population structures that increase the fixation probability of advanta ...

2020

Three-dimensional chromatin interactions remain stable upon CAG/CTG repeat expansion

Marion Leleu, Ludovica Vanzan, Flavia Marzetta, Ioannis Xenarios

Expanded CAG/CTG repeats underlie 13 neurological disorders, including myotonic dystrophy type 1 (DM1) and Huntington's disease (HD). Upon expansion, disease loci acquire heterochromatic characteristics, which may provoke changes to chromatin conformation ...

2020

Species conservation in the face of global environmental changes: surface-based modelling of geo-environmental data to identify vulnerable populations

Estelle Rochat

Human activities are resulting in many land-use changes, particularly due to urbanisation and intensification of agricultural practices. Because of these changes, in addition to climate change, many species are facing habitat degradation. In order to avoid ...

EPFL2020

Identification and characterisation of small-molecule inhibitors targeting STING

Simone Margret Haag

The recognition of pathogen-derived nucleic acids is a critical mechanism by which the innate immune system detects viral infection. Upon activation, nucleic acid sensors initiate the expression of type I interferons and other inflammatory mediators, subse ...

EPFL2019

Computational and Statistical analyses of Molecular Evolution and Demography using Large-scale Sequencing Data

Adamantia Kapopoulou

Evolution can be described as the change of allele frequencies over time. Four forces - mutation, migration, genetic drift, and selection, drive this change. The aim of my thesis was to accurately estimate and differentiate the parameters governing each of ...

EPFL2018

Evolution of urban scaling: Evidence from Brazil

Claudia Rebeca Binder Signer, João Vitor Meirelles de Miranda

During the last years, the new science of cities has been established as a fertile quantitative approach to systematically understand the urban phenomena. One of its main pillars is the proposition that urban systems display universal scaling behavior rega ...

2018

Genome-wide SNP profiling of worldwide goat populations reveals strong partitioning of diversity and highlights post-domestication migration routes

Stéphane Joost, Estelle Rochat, Elia Vajana

Background: Goat populations that are characterized within the AdaptMap project cover a large part of the worldwide distribution of this species and provide the opportunity to assess their diversity at a global scale. We analysed genome-wide 50K single nuc ...

BMC2018

Persistence of butterfly populations in fragmented habitats along urban density gradients: motility helps

Stéphane Joost, Estelle Rochat, Ivo Widmer

In a simulation study of genotypes conducted over 100 generations for more than 1600 butterfly’s individuals, we evaluate how the increase of anthropogenic fragmentation and reduction of habitat size along urbanisation gradients (from 7% to 59% of impervio ...

Nature Publishing Group2017

MAGIC detection of very high energy gamma-ray emission from the low-luminosity blazar 1ES 1741+196

Thomas Günther Bretz

We present the first detection of the nearby (z = 0.084) low-luminosity BL Lac object 1ES 1741+196 in the very high energy (E > 100 GeV) band. This object lies in a triplet of interacting galaxies. Early predictions had suggested 1ES 1741+196 to be, along ...

Oxford Univ Press2017

A heterogeneous evolutionary stable population under assortative matching: Exploring the diversity of preferences

Boris Thurm, Charles Chadi Ayoubi

Recent studies have shown that a population acting not only upon self-interest but also exhibiting some morality preference has an evolutionary advantage. Specifically, in the setting of a symmetric fitness game, a resident population is evolutionary stabl ...

2017

The Demographic and Adaptive History of the African Green Monkey

Susanne Petra Pfeifer

Relatively little is known about the evolutionary history of the African green monkey (genus Chlorocebus) due to the lack of sampled polymorphism data fromwild populations. Yet, this characterization of genetic diversity is not only critical for a better u ...

Oxford Univ Press2017

Two sides of the same coin: A population genetics perspective on lethal mutagenesis and mutational meltdown

Jeffrey David Jensen, Claudia Bank, Sebastian Matuszewski, Nicky Louise Ormond

The extinction of RNA virus populations upon application of a mutagenic drug is frequently referred to as evidence for the existence of an error threshold, above which the population cannot sustain the mutational load. To explain the extinction process aft ...

Oxford Univ Press2017